Home Affairs has been identified as a department which is central to government e-government strategy for service delivery as it produces documents that will enable citizens to access various grants and services from government. This requires the department to come out with modern systems that can provide interoperability among various government departments that can facilitate integrated services delivery.

The critical intervention area 8, information systems is a comprehensive programme that will allow the department to address various information technology systems areas in an integrated fashion. As you will notice, this is a programme that will take a department more than five years to complete. It addresses issues that affect service delivery internally within the department and also externally, to citizens and everybody who interacts with the department and government at large.

Under the first object, Hanis Reloaded, we are focusing on finalizing Hanis 1, which is already providing the department with a system of storing electronic fingerprint database and automatic verification of persons identity. In order to finalise this project,

We are currently working towards issuing the smart identity card to refugees. This process is taken as a pilot for the bigger smart identity card for citizens. National Intelligency Agency is assisting us in this process. We believe that the lessons that will be learnt from this process will be applied on the bigger smart id project. The improvement of the Refugee systems will be completed by the end of the financial year.

The system that will be used at the deportation centre will also be finalized by the end of this financial year. Through this system we will be able to positively identify all people who have gone through the repatriation centre using fingerprints. This will improve the department’s activities in Lindela as there will be no change of identity by persons every they enter the country illegally or try to claim refugee status or citizenship.

Together with the above activities we will be undertaking a process of redesign and cleaning the population register database. The discussion that the department has been going on with Stats South Africa shows that if the reliability of our database can be improved, they reduce the frequency of census. The same applies to IEC for the voters’ roll. Hence the department is looking at the unique identity number which does not change with the changes on the date of birth, gender or citizenship status. This is planned to be finalized by the end of the financial year.

An investigation is underway towards the introduction of the new passport system. With the September 11 events, there is a move towards a more secure smart passport which will be able to store a fingerprint and a photo of the holder. The department has to replace the current passport systems as it has read the end of its life. This is seen by the breakages of equipment and the malfunctioning of other components which results to spoilages and reprints. The new passport system should be in place by the end of 2005/2006 financial year.

With all this the department sees a need of the introduction of online capturing of information at the front offices. That is the taking of photos, fingerprints, forms, signature and other supporting documents electronically using available technology. An investigation has been started towards the putting together of this Integrated Client Service Console that will facilitate this. The combination of machines or a machine that has all these capabilities will have to be tested first with the current systems before being deployed to our offices. The Refugee and Deportation system will be used as a mechanism to test and facilitate the use of these machines with our current systems and in our future systems. Once these tests have been finalised, which will coincide with the finalization of the upgrade of the refugee and deportation system, these machines will be deployed to our offices countrywide.

A need has been identified for a track and trace system to track applications as they are received, processed and dispatched to the applicants. An investigation has been launched in the department where current technology will be used to inform the applicants using cellphones when an id or any other document is ready for collection, or the applicant can phone a number and enquire on the status of his/her application. This is planned to be finished by the end of the financial year. A more comprehensive workflow management system that will cover all departments activities will come with design of the new systems at the completion of the business process re-engineering exercise.

The computerization of offices and replacement of old irreparable equipment is continuing. During the past financial year and amount of R12mil was used in the replacement of old equipment in Home Affairs offices. 15 offices were targeted countrywide for computerization during the past year. The challenge with this process is trying to provide IT facilities in areas where Telkom and Sita does not have infrastructure to provide connectivity. The department is looking at making use of satellites where infrastructure is lagging. A comprehensive investigation on connectivity has been finalized which comes with various options which can be adopted by the department to provide access to its system. For this financial year we are planning to computerize 50 offices. Security in these offices is still a challenge as these computers can be stolen if the offices are not secured.

Mobile units will be deployed within this financial year. A request has been sent to Provincial Heads to provide IT with the list of areas where these will be deployed together with the list of offices that are ready for computerization within this financial year.

For internal processes, financial system, BAS has been deployed to 61 office the target was 21 offices, finalizing the departments intranet to facilitate information dissemination to Home Affairs employees and collection of statistics for reporting,

The department is busy with the recruitment process of Provincial IT support staff who will be based in the provinces. They will provide first line support provincially whilst adherence policies and standards will be monitored and evaluated from head office to ensure consistency.